Pitfalls of promising free tuition

“While the promise of free college sounds like a winning proposition, advocates could learn from the experience of millionaire New York businessman Eugene Lang. In 1981, he spontaneously promised a sixth-grade class at his Harlem alma mater he would pay for their college education if they would graduate from high school. This promise resulted in the formation of the I Have a Dream Foundation. It says that, since 1986, it has served 18,000 students who were three times more likely to complete a bachelor’s degree than their peers.”